Outside Project

Outside project 2

Source Evaluation

Arat, Zehra F. Kabasakal. "Women's Rights As Human Rights." UN Chronicle (U.N. Dept. of Public Information) Vol. 45, No. 2/3. 2008: 9-13. SIRS Researcher. Web. 21 Jul 2010.
This article is about human rights, but more importantly, it focuses on woman’s rights. The article talks about how woman have been subjected to more human rights violations than men, not just in the U.S., but throughout the world. The author also goes into detail about what it would take to change this way of thinking culturally and socially.
This article would be good to use for my paper because I am trying to research why the woman of Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale”, are so repressed, and link it to societies views on woman’s rights around the world. This article will definitely provide me with good information regarding this subject. I will also be able to get very credible information to back up my thesis.

Johnson, Karen.“The Day the Music Died:Woman and Girls of Afghanistan”. Search results for , Sear. Print.
This article is about the Taliban rule of Afghanistan and its impact on the woman of that society. Johnson talks about how repressed the woman have been since the Taliban militia took control of Kabul in Afghanistan. I believe what happened in Afghanistan is much like Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale”, an ultraconservative religious militia took control of a part of the country. This article enables me to make correlations between real life happenings around the world and “The Handmaid’s Tale”. This article also provides me with more information regarding the repression of woman in today’s societies.
Karen Johnson is the Executive Vice President of the National Organization for Woman. She is very well respect in the woman’s rights movement as well as a published author. This article was linked to website as a reliable source for this particular information. The information is dated, which is what I was looking for. The article is sponsored by a particular organization with an agenda. It does not make me suspicious because I was looking for a woman’s point of view about repressed woman in today’s society that may help me understand Margaret Atwood’s point of view. All in all I believe this to be a very reliable web resource.

Topic Proposal

For my topic on essay three, I would like to look into why these women of Gilead are so repressed. I feel like the real victims, in this fictional society, are the women. Although there are many things wrong with Gilead, I find this the most perplexing. Why would the men of this land want to repress their women so much? It seems to me that some of the best parts of life are creating relationships, and getting to know someone whom you might want to spend the rest of your life with as equals. Their religious beliefs seem to be the motive for this, but I think it is really the leaders of this new world trying to bring back a male dominated society. I believe Margaret Atwood was trying to remind us of the repressed women of our societies past, and some that still exists in the present.
I would like to learn more about why women have long been thought of as the lesser gender. It hasn’t been till the last century that society has accepted both genders as equals, and in some areas in the world women are as repressed as ever. For this essay I would like to research the history of women and their roles in societies of the past, and societies of the present. Maybe this research will give me some insight into why the men of Gilead feel the need to repress their women, and why women have been repressed in the past and present of our own societies. I also feel this will give me some insight to Margaret Atwood’s own beliefs and thoughts on this subject as well.
http://www2.hawaii.edu/~davink/topicproposals.html

Thesis Blog

1. “A” is the weakest thesis statement because it is very general and doesn’t meet any criteria for a good thesis statement.
2. “A” is the weak thesis statement because unlike the thesis statement “B” it doesn’t have the complexity. B creates more than one point of view and is subject to a good argument.
3. “B” is the weak thesis statement because it basically just tells you what they think of the jean industry and creates no real claim.
4. “A” is the weak thesis statement because it is just a statement telling you what the play is about.
5. “A” is the weak thesis statement because it is to long and it is hard understand the meaning of their thesis statement.




My Thesis Statement
I believe that Margaret Atwood’s, “The Handmaids Tale”, is a depiction of how bad a society can become when it is based on religious government and not democracy, as well as an insight to how the bible can be manipulated to serve a governments will.

This is a good thesis statement because it can be backed up by some of the religious references in the book. It is assertive and clearly states my point of view. It is definitely arguable, I’m sure not everyone would agree with this thesis statement but because it can be backed up by references in the book, it should make for a good argument. This thesis statement also raises many questions and isn’t to vast of a statement or generalized.
http://www.indiana.edu/~wts/pamphlets/thesis_statement.shtml

Mid-Session Check In

My English experience in college has been an enjoyable one so far. I never thought that I liked English this much, but after getting through English 100 and English 101 I am finding that I am enjoying it more and more. I wasn’t sure I wanted to take English 102 during the summer because I thought I wouldn’t learn as much due to the fast pace of summer courses. That has not been the case. I have been very surprised at how much I am learning in such a short amount of time. The biggest challenge I have had during this class has been the reading. I am not the best reader. If I am reading just for myself I can get through a book pretty quick, and grasp the story pretty well. When I am reading something for a paper I have to read it over and over, which can get pretty time consuming. The summary and analysis has been tough for me also. I have never written summary and analysis papers’ before, so it was hard to get the correct format. I’m still not sure if I do or not Ha Ha. Although I am not the best reader I have enjoyed the reading assignments for this class very much. It makes it easier to read and write about something when you enjoy the material. The reading thus far has had a positive affect on me. As I have mention before, I am in the National Guard and have been to Iraq. I have been able to relate to “ The Things They Carried ” and “ The Sand Storm”. I have also thought of writing about some of my own experiences, and they have inspired me to do so. I just need to become a better writer and maybe I could get something published. Earlier I wrote how the summary and analysis was hard for me. The only thing that I have done in English that was similar was summary and reviews in English 101. I find the summary part very easy and so was the review. The hard part is the analysis. I find you really have to look at each word very carefully to construct a good analysis of a paper. I feel my work early in the semester was not as good as it could be. I had to play catch up during the first few weeks due to my National Guard training and had to rush through some assignments. I am hoping to be able to take more time with my writing in the second half of the semester. So far I have received an “A” in all my English classes. I hope to continue that during the second half of this class. This class is much harder than the other two, but I think if I apply myself I could make it happen. I am also looking forward to reading “ The Handmaids Tail ”. At first I didn’t think I would enjoy it, but so far I like it a lot. All in all I am very pleased with the quality of this class and what I have learned. I looked forward to the challenges ahead the lessons I will learn.





Sincerely, Chris Mattson

How to Tell a True War Story

Tim O’Brien does a wonderful job with How to Tell a True War Story. I especially enjoyed how O’Brien tells the story of Curt Lemon’s death in three different forms. With each of the different versions you learn more about what happened. In between his descriptions of what happened to Curt Lemon, O’Brien brilliantly adds in Sanders story of the six men in the mountains and their spooky tale. Throughout the story O’Brien adds insight into what makes a good war story, but at the same time leaves the reader guessing as to what the true war story really is.
“ A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done. If the story seems moral, do not believe it.”(O’Brien 68). O’Brien begins the story of Curt Lemon by talking about Curt lemon’s best friend “Rat”, and how he writes a heartfelt letter to Lemon’s sister. During this part of the story the reader learns what type of person Curt Lemon was and how much he meant to “Rat”. The story ends with Lemon’s sister never writing back causing “Rat” to be disappointed and angry with her. As O’Brien reminisces about the day Lemon dies, he describes how they stopped for a rest and Lemon and “Rat” decided to play a game under the shade of a large tree. The story ends with O’Brien hearing a noise then looking over at Lemon. It is the next part that really captivated me as a reader. O’Brien says the sunlight came around him and lifted him into the tree. I feel that was the most beautiful description of a person’s death that I have ever read. This part of the story ends with that, leaving the reader wondering what truly happened.
“ In many cases a true war story cannot be believed. If you believe it, be skeptical. It’s a question of credibility. Often the crazy stuff is true and the normal stuff isn’t, because the normal stuff is necessary to make you believe the truly incredible craziness.”(O’Brien 71). O’Brien strays from the Curt Lemon story at this point to tell of Sander’s war story. Sanders tell a story of six men who are on a mission to sit in the mountain jungle and listen for enemy movement. The six soldiers hunker down not saying a peep for a week. During this week they start to hear strange noises, noises that should not be heard in the jungle. The noise starts off as music and then the sounds of a cocktail party. The men can’t take it anymore and end up calling in all sorts of artillery and air strikes in the area. When they dust settles in the morning they discover no bodies or signs that anything or anybody was on that mountain causing the noises. The men return back to the base when a Colonel demands answers to why they order the artillery and air strikes. The men just stare at him, salute, and walk away. Sanders Admits to embellishing a bit on the story but swears that it is true for the most part. O’Brien and Sanders then struggle to find the moral of the story, only to come to the conclusion that the moral is nothing just the silence created by the lack of a moral.
“ In a true war story, if there is a moral at all, it’s like the thread that makes the cloth. You can’t tease it out. You can’t extract the meaning without unraveling the deeper meaning. And in the end, really, there is nothing much to say about a true war story, except maybe “Oh”.” (O’Brien 77). O’Brien returns to the story of Curt Lemon and how he had stepped on a booby trap and exploded into the tree. O’Brien also tells of how “Rat” reacted to Lemon’s death. “Rat” caught a baby water buffalo and proceeded to torture it by shooting it over and over with non-lethal shots. I assume this part of the story was to show the evils that men do when subjected to the atrocities of war. “ Over here, man, every sin’s real fresh and Original.” ( O’Brien 80 ).
I feel that O’Brien’s reason for this chapter or story was to show the reader that a war story is just that a war story. It can be told in many ways. It can change each time by the storyteller’s recollection or different embellishments to make the story better. O’Brien says that it is not whether you believe the story or not, but if you ask “ Was the story true?”, then you have your answer. O’Brien is saying that the story, whether true or not, is only true if you want to believe it. O’Brien also goes on to talk about how war is as much beautiful as it is ugly. When a soldier is near death he is also closer to life, noticing all the beauties around him. That beauty is what also makes a war story true, all the little details, like the sun shining on Lemon’s face just before he explodes into a hundred pieces. I really had a difficult time trying to understand O’Brien’s description of a true war story, but what I think it boils down to is that there is no true way to tell a war story, and if there were, it wouldn’t be true at all.
http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/thingscarried/section6.rhtml

Summary and Analysis

On the Rainy River, by Tim O’Brien, is a short story about a young man in the late 60’s, just out of college, preparing for grad school at Harvard, and full of aspirations. One afternoon the young man receives a draft letter telling him he will be going to a war he does not approve of or believe in. Without telling his parents the young man goes about his life contemplating his options, go to war, or run to Canada. While working at the slaughterhouse one day, the young mans burden becomes to heavy and he hastily packs his things, writes a letter to his parents, and heads for Canada.
Just miles from the Canadian border the young man seeks shelter at a fishing lodge on the Rainy River, which separates the U.S. from Canada. Here the young man meets the owner of the fishing lodge, an elderly gentleman with a quiet wisdom. Over the course of the young mans six-day stay he befriends the old man, helping him with routine chores during the fishing lodges off-season. Without telling the old man of his reasons for being there the young man continues to struggle with the thought of crossing the border. In all of his wisdom the old man sees the young mans struggle and puts two and two together. One day the old man takes the young man out fishing on the Rainy River. When the boat stops the young man realizes he is 20 yards from the Canadian shore. All his thoughts about crossing the border become a harsh reality and he realizes he can’t do it, ultimately returning home and going to war.

This story depicts one mans struggle with making the decision between right and wrong. In this case right and wrong was decided by society, not by God or personal beliefs” you were a treasonous pussy if you had second thoughts about killing or dying for plain and simple reasons” (O’Brien 45). It also conveys the embarrassment of man who is ashamed at letting society dictate his life and not having the courage to do what he believed was right” what embarrasses me much more, and always will is the paralysis that took my heart, a moral freeze”, “I would go to war-I would kill and maybe die-because I was embarrassed not to” (O’Brien57 and 59). The young man was given two choices, go to a meaningless war and kill or be killed, or run to a foreign country and leave behind all he has ever loved and known. On the one hand it was against his beliefs to kill especially for an unknown cause or reason, and on the other hand society would deem him a coward and a traitor if he fled, not to mention dishonoring his family. When confronted face to face with his decision to run all he could see was all of societies characters, either ridiculing him or ashamed of him ultimately forcing his decision to go to war” I couldn’t endure the mockery, or the disgrace, or the patriotic ridicule”(O’Brien 59). The Irony is, he goes to war so society won’t deem him a coward, but ends deeming himself a coward for going” I survived, but it’s not a happy ending. I was a coward. I went to war.”(O’Brien 61).
http://www.illyria.com/tobhp.html

Sam Hammill Response

Well now that I am officially depressed I will try and write this response. I thought “The Necessity to Speak” was very well written and had some good points about the way things ought to be. There were also many things Hammill wrote that I disagreed with. I feel that because he had such a rough childhood, was in a war, and spent a lot of time with convicts and battered woman, he really dwells on the negativities in life. Most of the article felt like I was reading a list of humanties faults and perversions.
I understood Hammill’s reason for writing this article. I’m sure he wanted people to wake up and smell the coffee. Hammill is right in the fact that people act out in aggression because they don’t know how to express their true feelings or not teaching our children about subjects thought to be taboo solicits that very behavior. We need to speak, to each other, to our loved ones, and our children about all things even though it may be an uncomfortable subject, hence “The Necessity to Speak”. Using words (the correct words) instead of force and intimidation can make this world a much better place. I agreed with Hammill when he said, “nothing will change until we demolish the “we and them” mentality”(Hammill). That statement is so true. When I was in Iraq and had close contact with Iraqi detainees providing medical aid to them. I always treated them like patients and people, no different then I would anyone else. I actually got to know some of the English-speaking guys quite well, and realized besides the cultural differences we weren’t that much different. If we were anywhere else, we probably could have been friends. People are people no matter where you are in the world but over the course of history we have created these imaginary lines that separate us and sparked some age-old competition that makes us fight over petty things.
Some of the things I didn’t like about the article was I felt like he wasn’t giving people or the human race very much credit. I’m not sure when this article was written but I feel like it is a little outdated. When he talks about teenage pregnancy and says that teenage boys and girls don’t know about birth control, I would have to disagree. I don’t know any teenagers that don’t know what a condom is. I would also like to think that most men are smart enough to know that if they see John Wayne or Sylvester Stallone slap a woman in the movies, that it is not o.k. to do that in real life. I use to watch the Friday the 13th movies when I was a kid but I never went to a camp and killed a bunch of people. Hammill must have had a bad military experience also. Although the military did train me how to use a rifle, they also taught me how to heal, and gave me the knowledge to pursue a great career in medicine along with paying for my education. Every generation with the exception of the Vietnam era had the choice to join the military and it was up to each individual to know what they were getting into. Recruiters may go to the high schools but the kids have the choice to join or not.
As I said in my response to a poem assignment, I feel that most poetry and songs are originated from people who have had bad experiences because they need a healthy way to express their feelings. I think that is definitely the case with Mr. Hammill. There is much in the world that needs to change and it all begins with proper communication, as Hammill suggests in this article. I also think there is much in the world that is beautiful and great. Hopefully we can use the good as building blocks and move forward from there. I truly hope that one day we can achieve worldwide peace, but I feel that there will always be an evil in the world somewhere, for what would good be without evil.
http://www.progressive.org/mag_cusachamill

Poem Response

The two poems that caused a reaction from me were “Song of Napalm” and “Compendium of Lost Objects”. Both Poems had the same reaction for me, and that reaction was sadness. Both poems were written because the speaker had a bad experience. I think that a lot of poems like songs are written from experiences that caused sadness or were emotionally traumatizing. I think it is a way for the poet to cope with their feelings and maybe it helps them find a little closure. “ Song of Napalm” seems to be a poem about a man trying to forget the memories of war that haunt him, and “Compendium of Lost Objects” seems to be someone remembering the devastation of a hurricane possibly Katrina.
I felt sad for the speaker in “Song of Napalm” because he wanted so desperately to forget the sight of a little girl being burned to death by napalm but the image of it would be forever burned into his mind. The speaker talks about how he would image her flying away at the last second to safety, but realizes that he is lying to himself as soon as the thought is finished. “ I try to imagine she runs down the road and wings beat inside her and she rises above the stinking jungle and her pain eases, and your pain, and mine”(Weigl Lines 31-33). “ But the lie swings back again”(Weigl Line 34). “The lie works only as long as it takes to speak” (Weigl Line 35). To me these lines of the poem were the saddest. I feel like these five lines were the most powerful of the entire poem and really summed up the speakers feelings. He wants so bad to change the past or possibly forget it but he can’t and it is ruining his relationships in life with his family.
“Compendium of Lost Objects” was equally as sad. The speaker talks of the area were they grew up or spent a lot of time in, but now it has been devastated by a hurricane. I couldn’t imagine if all the places I loved, where the memories of my life were created, were all wiped away in the blink of an eye. It would be as if someone or something just took a part of your life and erased it. Before I read this poem I had thought the devastation of a natural disaster was bad but I never looked at it in the way this poem made me look at it. It made me think, what if that was my hometown, and how it would effect me.
Besides the sadness these poems made me feel I realized that poems could really put you into another persons shoes. I guess any piece of literature that causes a strong reaction can cause you to think more about it and give you a different perspective about the subject. I think reading and understanding the writers point of view can really make you understand others situations and look at them through their eyes.
http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/

Submission Field : According Nabokov a good reader is someone who has imagination, memory, a dictionary, and some artistic sense. He also feels a good reader should be a rereader. I agree and disagree with Nabokov, I agree with his statement that a good reader needs to be a rereader. I find that when you reread anything you are able to understand and embrace it more because you are not focusing so much on the story because you already know what it is about so you can focus more on the details. It is the same with movies when you watch them for the second or third time you notice so much more about them. I disagree with the four charcteristics that make a good reader. I feel that everyone is different in the ways that they think so I think what makes one person a good reader doesn't necessarily make another person a good reader. I agree that they are good qualities to have as a reader but not all good readers need a dictionary or an great imagination.
I believe a good reader should first and foremost have the desire and passion to read. I think a good reader must also have good interpritation skills because a reader wouldn't be much of a reader if they didn't understand what they were reading. Other than those two things I agree with Nabokov about memory, and artistic sense, but I think that he was wrong when he said a readers biggest mistake is identifying themselves with the character in the book. I think when a reader feels that they have something in common with the character it is easier to relate and makes the character more interesting to that reader. I myself am an O.K. reader. If I am interested in the material I retain it very well and enjoy reading it but if I don't i have to keep reading it over and over again because my mind wonders while I'm reading and I don't concentrate on the material. I don't read as much as I would like either. If I read more I might become a better reader. Hopefully this class will help me with my reading skills.

Introduction Video